Lyricism and the Power of a Great Wine Review

The wine review is a bit of a hoary tradition, much ridiculed among the new generation of wine writers. And I get some of that. Describing which red fruit (Is it raspberry? Currant? Huckleberry?) or what herb (Thyme? Savory? Chervil?) is most evident in a wine can get esoteric, arbitrary, even twee.  And, sure, it's easy to see how someone tasked with writing dozens of reviews each day can fall into patterns which make one wine seem much like another.  As an antidote, Eric Asimov from the New York Times challenged the 2011 Wine Blogger's Conference in his keynote speech to spend the next year not writing a single wine review, instead focusing on why their readers should care about the wine in the first place.

And yet, a great review can bring a wine to life in amazing ways, turning a description of a wine's colors, flavors, aromas and textures into a character sketch that is indelibly individual.  Last week we received such a series of reviews from Nashville, Tennessee-based wine writer Fredric Koeppel on his blog Bigger than Your Head.

I've followed Bigger Than Your Head for several years, since I became aware of Fredric's work thanks to the 2008 Wine Blog Awards, for which he was a finalist in the "Best Wine Review Blog" category (this blog won the much less competitive "Best Winery Blog" category that same year).  Fredric didn't win that year, but did in both 2009 and 2010, deservedly so, and was a finalist in both "Best Wine Review" and "Best Writing on a Wine Blog" the last two years.  What sets his reviews apart from the herd?  There are several aspects, none of which make him unique, but which in total set him among the very top cohort of wine reviewers, for my taste:

• He values context, and pulls out threads that tie together all the wines, describing as accurately as any article I've seen the style and influence of Tablas Creek's people and place.
• His writing is precise.  He doesn't recycle the same few descriptors, but brings in evocative flavors one doesn't normally associate with wine (our article included the descriptors "graham cracker", "marsh grass","iodine", "briars", and "spruce").
• He breaks a wine down into color, aromas, flavors, texture, and finish, and describes each piece sufficiently that you feel you come to know a wine. Of course, this takes a certain freedom from word limits and column inches.
• He gives a quality judgment, independent from the flavors he describes.  This isn't the omnipresent 100-point scale, nor is it some similar but simplified 20, 10, or 5-point scale.  His quality descriptors are intuitive; the ones used in our wines that he reviewed were "very good+", "excellent" and "exceptional". He's also not afraid to note wines that he does not recommend, which gives him credibility with the ones that he does.
• He notes value, highlighting wines that punch above their price category.

If you need further convincing to click over to his post, here's one review I particularly loved, that I felt captured our 2010 Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc -- a wine I think is the best white we've yet produced -- perfectly. If you don't agree, well, don't go read the rest. But I think you will.

Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc 2010, Paso Robles. 13.5% alc. 2,100 cases. 60% roussanne, 35% grenache blanc, 5% picpoul blanc. Pale straw-gold color; lovely balance and poise, light on its feet with a wonderful well-knit texture with finely-honed acidity and plangent steely, limestone qualities; again, a white wine of shades and degrees of nuance, lightly spiced, delicately fitted with lemon and pear flavors and a hint of apricot; all bound with that spruce-tinged minerality. Excellent. About $40